A place for me to speak-out. A chance for my soul to seek...
' Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue, the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet;
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams '
- William Butler Yeats

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Uncertainty Principle on NUMB3RS

Nature in Numbers...

I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics" - Richard Feynman

It seems that each century brings about a radical model revising the then standard view of the Universe. Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle was part of the revolution, in the first half of the 20th century, which redefined the constructs of the Universe. Heisenberg’s proposal happened to be so drastic that it made Quantum mechanics unacceptable for Albert Einstein. It states that the more certain “we” are of an electron’s position around the atom, the less certain our knowledge of its momentum becomes. Einstein believed in a Universe of finite possibilities; in other words, a Universe wherein anything can be calculated with absolute precision using mathematical equations. As it turned out, this was not the case with Quantum mechanics.

According to the Uncertainty Principle, it is theoretically impossible to calculate with certainty any quantity at the Quantum scale. Mathematically speaking, a single electron is everywhere in the Universe, except for the rare case where it comes in physical contact with a photon. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle gave rise to the chaotic and complex world of elementary particles, superposition, entanglement, parallel universes, and double digit dimensions. A simple four letter equation drew a new picture of the atom, one in which probability, not determinism, dictates the state of the Universe.

It is a perplexing thought that the chaos and uncertainty at the Quantum scale somehow adds up to yield a stable ordered world that we have come to known. The Universe has absolutely no reason to be in such perfect symphony.